In an age of food banks, the restaurant business has a problem: how do you make people who have the dosh feel comfortable about dropping £120 or more on dinner on a regular basis? Simple. You dispense with the word "restaurant". Far too glossy. A restaurant is all silver cloches, and linen so heavy you could swaddle a newborn in it. You need something humble. You need something that draws on history and tradition. In short, you need the word "tavern". It's all there, isn't it? The tavern is the pub's bedroomed soulmate. As Samuel Johnson said: "There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern." He knew a thing or two about a good night out, did Sam.

Right now they're spreading across London like bindweed in spring. There's the Newman Street Tavern just north of Oxford Street, where a good bit of grouse will set you back £24.50. Angela Hartnett and her colleagues have just opened the Merchants Tavern in Shoreditch, complete with distressed brickwork, curving leather banquettes and frosted glass screens. Best of all, though, is chef Jason Atherton's very humble Berner's Tavern at the London Edition Hotel. The ceiling is so high you could fly a kite in there, as long as you didn't chip the Georgian roses. There's acres of polished wood, a clutter of dodgy art and chandeliers like crystal tits. It's a humble room, much as Louie Spence is a quiet chap who doesn't draw attention to himself.

Atherton has other well-regarded restaurants playing similar linguistic games: a couple of them are called "socials", as though they were working men's clubs in Burnley; another is an "eating house". It's not a restaurant at all. Just a functional place to refuel on roast wild Cornish sea bream with saffron farfalle and truffle artichoke puree.

The model for all this, as ever, is New York. The famed Tavern on the Green – now gone, sadly – was one of the starriest restaurants in the city. The Gramercy Tavern may have a half-timbered ceiling, but it also has a $120 (£75) tasting menu. And like the London newcomers, it's always full. After all, nobody need feel ashamed of going out for dinner at a humble tavern.